Is Netflix Right? Does the Cinema Experience Fade Away? Can They Compete?
It seems like this question is asked every month, until the question itself fades away and another flop appears, giving it life once more, and so on in this vicious cycle. But yesterday, when I stumbled through the doors of one of the cinemas in the area to watch Predator: Badlands —a movie I had already seen—I had to ask myself: does the cinema experience really fade away? Is Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos right about how “outdated” the movie theater model is? Given how small the amount of people who actually go to the cinema is compared to the 300 million regularly paying Netflix subscribers, Sarandos may be onto something. I really enjoyed Predator: Badlands the first time I saw it, when I went to a small movie theater where people behaved and prices were still bearable. The second time, I didn’t have that luck. Movie tickets—for a film that had been out for more than a month—were 10€ each, and a 1L Pepsi with popcorn was 15€, which made the whole experience cost 50€ for a movie I...